Prefatory Letter.

I thank you for your prompt assent to my request that your Tract on the relations of Reformed and unreformed Christianity respectively, in the West of Europe, to the liberty and prosperity of nations, might be translated into English.

I need hardly say to any, least of all to you, that this request did not imply adoption of your precise point of view, or of each of your opinions in detail. You have not, I believe, been governed by theological partialities in the judgment at which you have arrived; nor have I, in the desire to give currency in this country to a Tract which includes your rather unfavourable estimate of its Church in comparison with the other Reformed Communions. But I have felt that desire very strongly, because, within a compass wonderfully brief, you have page 6 initiated in a very vivid manner, and have even advanced to a certain point, the discussion of a question which heretofore can hardly be said to have been presented to the public mind, and which it seems to me high time to examine. That, question is, whether experience has now supplied data sufficient for a trustworthy comparison of results, in the several spheres of political liberty, social advancement, mental intelligence, and general morality, between the Church of Rome on the one hand, and the religious communities cast off by or separated from her on the other.

Mr. Hallam stated, many years ago, the difficulty of arriving at a conclusion on the ethical section of this question: but much, which in his day remained obscure, has been considerably elucidated by recent experience. And I trust that the brief but significant and weighty indications of your pamphlet, especially if they should not be followed by a fuller treatment from your own pen, may turn the thoughts of other students of history and observers of life to a thorough examination of this wide and most fruitful field.

There are other features in your mode of handling page 7 the case, from which England in particular may derive much instruction. With reference to the political and social fruits of religion, we have been accustomed to regard Belgium as the one choice garden of the Roman Church: and it has afforded a ready answer to many who entertained strong suspicion of her workings. It will be well for us to have a few words on this subject from a Belgian of known liberality and tolerance, who knows what, and under what difficulties, the wisdom of two successive kings has done for Belgium; and who is too acute either to undervalue the power and fixed intentions of the Ultramontane conspiracy, or to find comfort in the visionary notion that any security is afforded to European society against that conspiracy by any system of mere negations in religion. This last-named error is widely prevalent in England. There is an impression, which is not worthy to be called a conviction, but which holds the place of one, that the indifferentism, scepticism, materialism, and pantheism which for the moment are so fashionable, afford, among them, an effectual defence against Vaticanism. But one has truly said that the votaries of that system have three elements of real strength, namely, faith, page 8 self-sacrifice, and the spirit of continuity. None of the three are to be found in any of the negative systems; and you have justly and forcibly pointed out that these systems, through the feelings of repugnance and alarm which they excite in many religious minds, are effectual allies of the Romanism of the day. The Romanism of the day in a measure repays its obligation, by making its censure of these evils sincere no doubt, but only light and rare in comparison with the anathemas which it bestows upon liberty and its guarantees, most of all when any tendency to claim them is detected within its own precinct.